"Nonsense, Squire. I say he might have done it. I say, moreover, that
it looks very like it. Putting Monk aside, your scent would be wholly
at fault."
"What is to be done?"
"I'll go and see Mother Picker; she can tell what time he went in last
night, and what time he came out this morning," cried Tod, who was just
as hasty as the pater. But old Duff caught him as he was vaulting off.
"_I_ had better see Mother Picker. Will you let me act in this matter,
Squire, and see what can be made of it?"
"Do, Duffham. Take Jones to help you?"
"Jones be shot," returned Duff in a passion. "If I wanted any
one--which I _don't_--I'd take Johnny. He is worth fifty Joneses.
_Say nothing_--nothing at all. Do you understand?"
He went off down a side path, and crossed Jenkins, who was at work now.
Monk stayed in the greenhouse.
"This is a sad calamity, Jenkins."
"It's the worst _I_ ever met with, sir," cried Jenkins, touching his
hat. "And what have done it is the odd thing. Monk, he talks of the
candles poisoning of 'em; but I don't know."
"Well, there's not a much surer poison than arsenic, Jenkins," said the
doctor, candidly. "I hope it will be cleared up. Monk, too, has taken so
much pains with the plants. He is a clever young man in his vocation.
Where did you hear of him?"
Jenkins's answer was a long one. Curtailed, it stated that he had heard
of Monk "promiskeous." He had thought him a gentleman till he asked if
he, Jenkins, could help him to a place as ornamental gardener. He had
rather took to the young man, and recommended the Squire to employ him
"temporay," for he, Jenkins, was just then falling sick with rheumatism.
Mr. Duffham nodded approvingly. "Didn't think it necessary to ask for
references?"
"Monk said he could give me a cart-load a'most of them, sir, if I'd
wanted to see 'em."
"Just so! Good-day, Jenkins, I can't stay gossiping my morning away."
He went straight to Mrs. Picker's, and caught her taking her luncheon
off the kitchen-table--bread-and-cheese, and perry.
"It's a little cask o' last year's my son have made me a present of,
sir; if you'd be pleased to drink a cup, Dr. Duff'm," said she,
hospitably.
She drew a half-pint cup full; bright, sparkling, full-bodied perry,
never better made in Gloucestershire. Mr. Duffham smacked his lips, and
wished some of the champagne at gentlemen's tables was half as good. He
talked, and she talked; and, it may be, he took her a little off her
guard. Evidently, she was not cognizant of the mishap to the greenhouse.
A nice young man that lodger of hers? Well, yes, he was; steady and
well-conducted. Talked quite like a gentleman, but wasn't uppish 'cause
o' that, and seemed satisfied with all she did for him. He was gone off
to Evesham after seeds and other things. Squire Todhetley put great
confidence in him.
"Ay," said Mr. Duffham, "to be sure. One does put confidence in steady
young men, you know, Goody. He was off by four o'clock, wasn't he?"
Earlier nor that, Goody Picker thought. Monk were one o' them who liked
to take time by the forelock, and get his extra work forrard when he
were put on to any.
"Nothing like putting the shoulder to the wheel. This _is_ perry! The
next time I call to see your son Peter, at Alcester, I shall ask him if
he can't get some for me. As to Monk--you might have had young fellows
here who'd have idled their days away, and paid no rent, Goody. Monk was
at his work late last night, too, I fancy?"
Goody fancied he had been; leastways he went out after supper, and were
gone an hour or so. What with the fires, and what with the opening and
shutting o' the winders to keep the hot-houses at proper temperture, an
head-gardener didn't sit on a bed o' idle roses, as Dr. Duff'm knew.
Mr. Duffham was beginning to make pretty sure of winning his game. His
manner suddenly changed. Pushing the empty cup from him, he leaned
forward, and laid hold of Mrs. Picker by the two wrists. Between the
perry and the doctor's sociability and Monk's merits, her eyes had begun
to sparkle.
"Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Picker. I have come here to ask you a question,
_and you must answer me_. But you have nothing to fear on your own
score, provided you tell me the truth honestly. Young men will do
foolish things, however industrious they may be. Why did Monk play that
prank on Easter Monday?"
The sparkle in the eyes faded with fright. She would have got away, but
could not, and so put on an air of wonder.
"On Easter Monday! What were it he did on Easter Monday?"
"When he put himself and his face into white, and went to the churchyard
by moonlight to represent the dead, you know, Mrs. Picker."
She gave a shrill scream, got one of her hands loose and flung it up to
her face.
"Come, Goody, you had better answer me quietly than be taken to confess
before Squire Todhetley. I dare say you were not to blame."
Afore Squire Todhetley! O-o-o-o-o-h! Did they know it at the Manor?
"Well," said Mr. Duffham, "you see I know it, and I have come straight
from there. Now then, my good woman, I have not much time."
Goody Picker's will was good to hold out longer, but she surrendered à
coup de main, as so many of us have to do when superior power is brought
to bear. Monk overheered it, was the substance of her answer. On coming
in from work that there same blessed evening--and look at him now! at
his work on a Easter Monday till past dark!--he overheered the two
servants, Molly and Hannah, talking of what they was going out to watch
for--the shadows in the churchyard. He let 'em go, never showing hisself
till they'd left the house. Then he got the sheets from his bed, and put
the flour on his face, and went on there to frighten 'em; all in fun.
He never thought of hurting the women; he never knowed as the young
girl, Phoebe, was to be there. Nobody could be more sorry for it nor
he was; but he'd never meant to do harm more nor a babby unborn.
Mr. Duffham released the hands. Looking back in reflection, he had
little doubt it was as she said--that Monk had done it out of pure
sport, not intending ill.
"He might have confessed: it would have been more honest. And you! why
did you deny that it was Monk?"
Mrs. Picker at first could only stare in reply. Confess to it? Him?
What, and run the risk o' being put into ancuffs by that there Jones
with his fat legs? And she! a poor old widder? If Monk went and said he
didn't do it, she couldn't go and say he _did_. Doctor Duff'm might see
as there were no choice left for _her_. Never should she forget the
fright when the two young gents come in with their querries the next
day; her fingers was took with the palsy and dropped the pudd'n basin,
as she'd had fifteen year. Monk, poor fellow, couldn't sleep for a peck
o' nights after, thinking o' Phoebe.
"There; that's enough," said Mr. Duffham. "Who is Monk? Where does he
come from?"
From the moon, for all Mrs. Picker knew. A civiler young man she'd not
wish to have lodging with her; paid reg'lar as the Saturdays come round;
but he never told her nothing about hisself.
"Which is his room? The one at the back, I suppose."
Without saying with your leave, or by your leave, as Mrs. Picker phrased
it in telling the story a long while afterwards, Mr. Duffham penetrated
at once into the lodger's room. There he took the liberty of making a
slight examination, good Mrs. Picker standing by with round eyes and
open mouth. And what he discovered caused him to stride off at once to
the pater.
Roger Monk was not Monk at all, but somebody else. He had been
implicated in some crime (whether guilty or not remained yet a
question), and to avoid exposure had come away into this quiet locality
under a false name. In short, during the time he had been working as
gardener at Dyke Manor and living at Mother Picker's, he was in hiding.
As the son of a well-known and most respectable landscape and ornamental
nursery-man, he had become thoroughly conversant with the requisite
duties.
"They are fools, at the best, these fellows," remarked Duffham, as he
finished his narrative. "A letter written to him by some friend betrayed
to me all this. Now why should not Monk have destroyed that letter,
instead of keeping it in his room, Squire?"
The Squire did not answer. All he could do just now was to wipe his hot
face and try to get over his amazement. Monk not a gardener or servant
at all, but an educated man! Only living there to hide from the police;
and calling himself by any name that came uppermost--which happened to
be Monk!
"I must say there's a certain credit due to him for his patient
industry, and the perfection to which he has brought your grounds," said
Mr. Duffham.
"And for blighting all my hot-house plants at a blow--is there credit
due to him for that?" roared out the Squire. "I'll have him tried for
it, as sure as my name's Todhetley."
It was easier said than done. For when Mr. Jones, receiving his private
orders from the pater, went, staff in hand, to arrest Monk, that
gentleman had already departed.
"He come into the house just as Dr. Duff'm left it," explained Mrs.
Picker. "Saying he had got to take a short journey, he put his things
into his port-manty, and went off carrying of it, leaving me a week's
rent on the table."
"Go and catch him, Jones," sternly commanded the Squire, when the
constable came back with the above news.
"Yes, your worship," replied Jones. But how he was to do it, taking the
gouty legs into consideration, was quite a different thing.
The men were sent off various ways. And came back again, not having
come up with Monk. Squire Todhetley went into a rage, abused old Jones,
and told him he was no longer worth his salt. But the strangest thing
occurred in the evening.
The pater walked over to the Court after tea, carrying the grievance
of his destroyed plants to the Sterlings. In coming up Dyke Lane as
he returned at night, where it was always darker than in other places
because the trees hid the moonlight, somebody seemed to walk right out
of the hedge upon him.
It was Roger Monk. He raised his hat to the Squire as a gentleman
does--did not touch it as a gardener--and began pleading for clemency.
"Clemency, after destroying a whole hot-houseful of rare plants!" cried
the Squire.
"I never did it, sir," returned Monk, passionately. "On my word as
a man--I will not to you say as a gentleman--if the plants were not
injured by the candles, as I fully believe, I know not how they could
have been injured."
The pater was staggered. At heart he was the best man living. Suppose
Monk _was_ innocent?
"Look here, Monk. You know your name is----"
"Hush, sir!" interposed Monk, hastily, as if to prevent the hedges
hearing the true name. "It is of that I have waited to speak to you;
to beseech your clemency. I have no need to crave it in the matter of
plants which I never harmed. I want to ask you to be silent, sir; not
to proclaim to the world that I am other than what I appeared to be. A
short while longer and I should have been able to prove my innocence;
things are working round. But if you set the hue-and-cry upon me----"
"Were you innocent?" interposed the Squire.
"I was; I swear it to you. Oh, Mr. Todhetley, think for a moment! I am
not so very much older than your son; he is not more innocent than I
was; but it might happen that he--I crave your pardon, sir, but it
_might_--that he should become the companion of dissipated young
men, and get mixed up unwittingly in a disgraceful affair, whose
circumstances were so complicated that he could only fly for a time and
hide himself. What would you say if the people with whom he took refuge,
whether as servant or else, were to deliver him up to justice, and he
stood before the world an accused felon? Sir, it is my case. Keep my
secret; keep my secret, Mr. Todhetley."
"And couldn't you prove your innocence?" cried the Squire, as he
followed out the train of ideas suggested.
"Not at present--that I see. And when once a man has stood at a criminal
bar, it is a ban on him for life, although it may be afterwards shown he
stood there wrongly."
"True," said the Squire, softening.
Well--for there's no space to go on at length--the upshot was that Monk
went away with a promise; and the Squire came home to the Manor and told
Duffham, who was waiting there, that they must both be silent. Only
those two knew of the discovery; they had kept the particulars and
Monk's real name to themselves. Duff gave his head a toss, and told the
pater he was softer than old Jones.
"How came _you_ to suspect him, Johnny?" he continued, turning on me in
his sharp way.
"I think just for the same things that you did, Mr. Duffham--because
neither his face nor his voice is _true_."
And--remembering his look of revenge when accused in mistake for the
magpie--I suspected him still.